Season 7 Episode 16: Mr. Empty Pants

Peg draws a cartoon. The subject is her husband, the title is Mr. Empty Pants, and against every expectation it gets published and becomes a hit, which means that Al Bundy is now a nationally recognized figure for the one thing about himself he would least like publicized. People point at him in the street. Strangers use the name. Tour groups photograph him. Al’s attempts to establish what the phrase is even supposed to mean produce one of the better Al-and-Peg exchanges of the season, built on his theory that it might be modern slang working in reverse. Then the situation inverts. Al is approached to appear as a Playgirl centerfold, and the prospect of her husband being wanted by a national readership is more than Peg is prepared to tolerate, so the woman who built her career on humiliating him in print spends the second half of the episode trying to stop anybody else looking at him. Jefferson’s contribution is a trip to a salon for a treatment he describes as The Bogie, and a conversation with Al about the Bulls in which the two men turn out to be discussing entirely different subjects. The show scores Al’s preparation for the photo shoot to “Tuff Enuff,” the same cue it used when he took the bartending job, which is probably not an accident. It is one of the few episodes where Peg is unambiguously the one driving the plot, and the series gives her a win and then makes her uncomfortable with it, which is more than it usually bothered to do.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: February 14, 1993
• Season and episode: Season 7, Episode 16
• Overall episode number: 147
• Written by: George Tricker
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Production note: From this episode the enlarged credit treatment introduced two weeks earlier extends to the producer credits in the opening sequence.
• Title note: Named for the cartoon Peggy creates.

Guest Cast

• Cynthia Szigeti as Bertha
• Steve Bean as Steve the photographer
• Brian Jensen as Antoine
• Jack Kenny as Fredo
• Kristi Ducati as Candy
• Avalon Anders as Sandy
• Jayne Halskov as Mandy
• Cain Devore as the man (credited as Cain DeVore)
• Arthur Hanket as the anchorman (voice)

Mr. Empty Pants

The premise is a good one because it gives Peg the only genuine professional success any Bundy ever achieves, and it is built entirely out of her husband’s inadequacy. She has monetized him. When Al complains, her advice is to handle the fame the way other people do, and the list of examples she offers, running from Carroll O’Connor through a misremembered Henry Winkler to a flatly cruel description of two Facts of Life cast members, is the funniest thing in the episode.

Al’s attempt to decode the nickname is the other standout. His proposed reading, that it is hip slang operating by inversion in the manner of bad meaning good, is delivered with total conviction, and Peg’s response to it is a two-word Looney Tunes sign-off.

The Playgirl half of the episode is the part that does something with the characters. Peg has spent the entire run being refused by Al, and the moment a magazine wants him, she objects. The show does not spell out why, which is the right choice.

Avalon Anders, one of the bikini models here, was a member of the Swedish Bikini Team, though she did not appear with the group when they turned up in season 6’s “The Gas Station Show.” Steve Bean, the photographer, had been on the show back in season 3’s “The Gypsy Cried” as the man who returns Al’s wallet.

Famous Quotes

• Al: “Peg! Everywhere I go, people are pointing at me and laughing!” Peg: “That can’t be a recent thing.”
• Al, working on the etymology: “Now they’re calling me ‘Mr. Empty Pants’! Is that some kind of new hip, rap term, you know, for ‘Full Pants’?! You know, sorta like how ‘Bad’ means ‘Good’ and ‘Dis’ means ‘Dat’?!” Peg: “…Dat’s All, Folks!”
• Peg, on celebrity: “They still call Carroll O’Connor ‘Archie.’ They still call that Winky guy ‘The Fonz.’ And, you know, they still call the fat girls on The Facts of Life ‘The Fat Girls on The Facts of Life.’”

Notes

• Al mentions having once been deported to Mexico after Peg took his wallet and left him with no identification.
• Jefferson’s salon appointment is for a treatment he calls The Bogie.
• Al and Jefferson have a conversation about the Bulls in which Al discusses Michael Jordan and Jefferson is talking about something else entirely.
• “Tuff Enuff” by the Fabulous Thunderbirds scores Al’s preparation for the photo shoot.
• A goof: Buck announces to the audience that his head is stuck under the staircase rail, having been sitting normally on the stairs a minute earlier and sitting normally again a minute later.